by Jane Gardam
‘Come back,’ Jocasta called. ‘Philip, come back and say thank you to Andrew for getting you from school.’
‘Thanks, Andrew,’ said Philip in Jocasta-speak, then, ‘I said, yer goin’ down Middlesber? Can ah coom wid yer?’
The Smikes continued to drink out of Coke cans. Jack’s pick-up could be heard approaching the gatehouse from its trip to York and Jack climbed down from it and went over to Philip, smiling.
‘Now then, Philip, what’s this?’
‘E wantster coom Middlesber,’ said Smike One (Ernie). ‘We’s goin’ down Retcer ont bikes.’
‘That’s a matter for Jocasta,’ said Jack and looked across to the Toyota. His brother now seemed to be there alone.
‘She’s gone to look at Faith, I think,’ said Andrew. ‘Pammie get off OK?’
‘Perfectly. Now, what about Evensong? I thought there should be a little welcoming ceremony for Faith. I thought maybe somebody might carry her up to the altar and I could bless her.’
Andrew looked uneasy.
‘Perhaps Philip?’ said Jack.
Philip aimed a sudden kick at Smike Two (Nick), who had just lit up a joint and aimed the match in Philip’s direction. Then he went into The Priors, looking for food. Andrew thought, Nasty little prick.
The journey from school had not been agreeable. Philip had come, almost bustling, to the car in the school yard, climbed in the back and said, ‘Hi, Andrew’ (after six years). ‘Where is she?’
Andrew, dazed from the journey out, warmed and sleepy by the delight of Jocasta’s silky thigh beside the handbrake, the smell of her hair and skin, said, ‘Where’s who?’
Philip didn’t answer. As they started for home Philip realised there must have been some mistake. He’d thought—he had known—that they were bringing his sister. He knew it was true. He’d heard them all talking and stuff being brought in and so on. Baby. Faith. He’d liked Holly. ‘Holly’s Faith’ they’d all been saying. He wasn’t mad about the idea of Holly being dead.
Faith. Coming to live up here. His sister. Like most dyslexics he had a hazy grasp of relationships. Nephews and nieces, cousins and aunts, they were more complicated for him than the construction of computer programmes that would have puzzled Aristotle and came to him like breathing. At eleven, grandparents he could just about understand, maybe because Dolly and Toots were woven into his life. They were Jack’s parents and Andrew’s parents. He knew this. Jack he had been told was his stepfather only, but he’d never enquired into that. He remembered a time in somewhere vile when there had been no Jack. Some house fully of dirty rooms in screaming streets. Bright red buses. Police sirens. Vaguely once a place called Earls Court where there had been acrobats. Jocasta had been there with some people—but no Jack, nobody he knew now.
‘Well, but you are my grandparents, though?’ he’d asked Dolly and Toots, and Dolly had said, ‘Well . . . ’ and stopped. Toots had said, ‘That’s right, boy. Twice over.’
The first and only thing Philip had ever made with Jocasta in one of her craft classes had been a wooden box that stood askew and was narrow at the bottom so that dirt got in the corners and everyone had laughed at it, but when he gave it to Dolly and Toots at Christmas they had been in raptures. ‘Put that right there by my bed,’ Toots had said. ‘Now, that’s not to be moved. That’s for my papers,’ and Dolly had shown it to everyone, especially Mrs. Middleditch, who had said that her Bingham couldn’t have made it at eleven and he was now a mechanical engineer. These were grandparently events, he sensed. Philip was rather mad about his grandparents.
‘You got heather on your back, Jocasta,’ he said, ‘and bits in your hair.’ She said nothing. ‘Where’s the baby?’ he tried again. ‘I thought you had brought the baby.’
‘She’d had enough driving,’ said Andrew. ‘She’s being looked after at The Priors. You’ll see her when we get there.’
‘Oh, I don’t care about seeing her,’ said Philip. ‘I just wondered if you could have forgotten her.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Philip,’ said his mother.
‘I thought that Philip might carry up Faith this evening,’ said Jack at tea, ‘bring her up from the body of the chapel to the altar and then I could carry her down again and show her about to the congregation—the visitors and all the staff and everyone. The two youngest ones together.’
‘You might do better to get one of the visitors. One of the oldest,’ said Alice Banks, The Missus, the housekeeper. ‘The one that looks as old as Shangri-La.’
‘She’s looking after Faith at the moment,’ said Jack. ‘Well, I think so. I hope so. Have you been to see her, Jocasta? You took her over there, Alice, didn’t you, after you’d seen to Andrew’s bedroom?’
The Missus said yes, but it had hardly been a question of handing over, the Tibetan lady had carried Faith off in her bosom.
Everyone laughed except Philip.
‘Can I go with The Smikes?’ he asked.
‘Not again,’ said The Missus. ‘Not again. You can’t.’
‘Who are The Smikes?’ asked Andrew.
‘Our saviours,’ said Jack. His smile was a light unto his feet. ‘Can’t do without them. They hold us all together.’
The Missus looked darkly at her plate.
‘They’re ex-remand boys,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve had them a while now. They decided to stay on after they’d done their community service. They were burglars. It’s a great tribute to us. But no, Philip, you’re not to go with them again.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ said The Missus, ‘they’re older than you are. They get you in trouble. The trouble they make is their own affair, so I’m told, since they’re over eighteen. Now it’s all girls and drink, and it’s way too soon for you.’
‘It’s quite right for The Smikes,’ said Jack. ‘We lead them now, we don’t command. We only can suggest right values.’
‘Couldn’t one of them carry up the baby?’ said Philip. ‘I’d just drop her or something.’ He awaited contradiction.
‘Well, if you think you would,’ said Jack, and Jocasta said, ‘He would. He’s not to do it. Her father shall carry her, if anyone.’
‘Actually, I don’t see why anyone should,’ said Andrew. ‘She’ll be having a christening some time, won’t she? She’s been jumped round enough for one day. Surrey ladies and Tibetans.’
‘So, could I go with The Smikes? I could stay the night, if you like, with Dolly and Toots.’
‘No, I don’t like the way Nick drives,’ said The Missus.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Jocasta, changing sides.
‘They’re wonderful drivers,’ said Jack. ‘People go on about young drivers today but they’re better than we are. Wonderful reflexes. I wish mine were anything like them.’
‘Oh, I dare say Philip will be safer with them than you,’ said his brother.
Looking Philip over, Andrew felt a pang of remorse. He’d not addressed a word to the child in the car, his thoughts being far from step-nephews, his hands trembling, his whole dishevelled being reliving the glory of the journey out. What a day! he thought. Pammie and The George and all that prattle and getting lost and theology and losing courage and nearly going home to Mum and then arriving—and there she was. Oh God. And within two hours, naked in the heather. And now Evensong.
Andrew disliked boys. He disliked children altogether, really. He found them selfish, wrapped up in themselves, expecting attention and interest to be taken. He still couldn’t quite believe in Faith. He hadn’t been able to take her in at all. But there was something rather arresting about Philip now. Very honest. Yet complex. Well, he was Jocasta’s, wasn’t he? God knows who the father had been. Good old Jack, taking him on. The boy must have a queer sort of life.
‘I’ll be going down tomorrow to see Dolly and Toots,’ he said. ‘I could bring you back, Philip, if these Smikes dro
p you off there tonight.’
‘Only if The Smikes promise to drop you off on their way in. We don’t want you joining up with them in whatever their goings-on are,’ said The Missus. Jocasta moved her fork about. Jack smiled. Whose the hell’s am I? thought Philip.
‘And you must be strapped in that bike this time,’ said The Missus, ‘and ring up the minute you get there.’
‘I must write my few words for the service now,’ said Jack. ‘What do you say about Philip going, then, Jocasta?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Friday night. No school tomorrow.’
‘Then we’ll all go to Evensong in ten minutes,’ said Jack. ‘The visitors will be in the chapel already. Shall we gather up Faith and begin?’
‘What about this carrying-up thing I have to do?’ asked Philip.
‘We’ll leave it. We’ll say some prayers for her, but perhaps we’ll leave the presentation until some time like the christening when Dolly and Toots . . . And we might invite that good woman to come back. Jocasta—darling, what’s the matter?’
‘Tired,’ she said. ‘I’m going to lie down. I’ll miss this.’
During the service the old Tibetan woman, who must have heard some rumour of a ceremony, took matters and Faith into her own hands. In the middle of a hymn in which the Tibetans did not join she suddenly arose with the cot and dumped it on the altar and went back to her place.
‘Cheek,’ said The Missus.
From the front pew, Philip observed Faith. Strapped on the slanting tray of the cot, she was looking down the tin church this way and that, alertly at the candles on either side of her, wonderingly at the sunlight dying through the metal windows. She began to drum her feet against the tray and opened wide her arms. Squirming rather angrily, she made a sound that might have been either laughter or tears.
15
Are yer goin’ ont sans?’ yelled Philip over the racket of the motorbike. He was in a sidecar hitched to the bike’s side with ramshackle hooks and twine. It bobbed up and down like a cockleshell boat. The Smikes, one behind the other, kept their faces forward. ‘Don’t drop me off at me gran’s, Nick. Gi’s a break, Nick.’ The machine was slowing down at the end of Dolly and Toots’s road. Usually Philip was tipped out near old Toots’s seat beside the church and walked the rest of the way, but the slowing-down process was being a tricky one tonight and Nick, swearing, decided to pack it in for the time being and drive on. They went over the top of a low sandy roundabout with the sound of a cohort of cavalry, plunged on over a short dead-end of unmade road that led into the sand dunes, and bike and sidecar then performed a ballet in the gloaming across golf bunkers and low grassy hills and swooped down upon the seashore beyond.
It was dark. The sands were hard and wide and appeared to be empty. ‘Let yer frottle art,’ shouted Ernie to Nick. ‘Let ’er go.’
‘Yes, let yer frottle art, yer booger,’ shouted Philip alongside, bouncing.
Nick obliged and the machine with a noise like a steelworks when they open up furnaces took off along the shore, weaving among half-submerged rocks and piles of seaweed and springing like a thoroughbred over a massive rusty sewer pipe. The waves drew back as they passed by.
The bike roared in a crescendo and then faded and stopped at last in a profound silence. Some faint cries reached them from the promenade. Ernie, the quieter Smike, let out a long halloo like a fox yapping and Nick began a paean of demon laughter. Bouncing slowly like an airliner after landing, the hooks of the sidecar suddenly broke and it went careering, with Philip inside it, out into the ocean.
When they’d dragged him out again and failed to re-harness sidecar to bike, they pushed them, with some difficulty—especially for Philip, who was in sole charge of the sidecar—up the deep grubby sand. When Philip reached the promenade both Smikes were leaning against a fishing boat, in conversation with friends. Trying to haul his charger up the steps, Philip called, ‘Yer gotter ’elp me, Nick. It’s ’eavy.’
‘Poor little booger. Poor little soft booger, ’elp yerselluf.’
It was Ernie who came over in the end and got behind Philip to drag and heave the thing, though he looked the less strong of the two. Emaciated, tattooed and earringed, he seemed as he rose up the steps from the strand like someone rescued after weeks in an open boat. This was deeply misleading. Ernie’s gentle appearance had stood him in good stead for years, particularly with women of the maternal variety, and had been to his great advantage as a burglar.
The bike and sidecar were brought together among the boats with the intermittent help of new Smike cronies, who had detached themselves from the open doors of the amusement arcade opposite and from the yards and wynds that joined the straggling, clapped-out ex-fishing town to the shore. There followed a big struggle to get the bike and sidecar re-attached and padlocked to the railings of a statue of a bewhiskered Victorian benefactor of the town staring out to sea above their heads.
The amusement palaces behind him wailed and blinked their lights. ‘See yer, Philip,’ said Nick making for the pub. ‘Git off to yer gran’s or we’ll cop it.’
‘Can I coom wid yer? ’Alf an ’ower?’
‘Yer not old enough. Yer eleven.’
‘I look more,’ said Philip. ‘Can I coom wid yer to t’video games, then, Ernie?’
Ernie, who had joined another gang, one of whom had an arm round Ernie’s waist, said, ‘Garn, Philip, git lost.’
‘Oh, garn, Ernie.’
“Ow mooch money yer got?’
‘Four pound.’
‘OK then. Cost yer three.’
Philip handed over three pound coins and accompanied Ernie and his consorts into the arcade. Nick had already disappeared.
At first he let himself drown in the glory of the place, the glitter, the pulse and blood glare of the lights, the filthy floor, the robotic seducers bleeping and flashing, the tremendous satisfaction of the tin music, the shouts and laughs of the clientele. He drifted about, wondering which machine he should honour with his pound. Out of sight, he heard Ernie’s gang manning the video games and went to find them. Ernie was in thrall to a naked woman with bared teeth who was surging towards him down a mountain side, whirling a whip. He seemed enchanted, and when the screen went blank said, “ere, Phil, gi’s yer pound.’
‘I can’t,’ said Philip. ‘I need it.’
‘Yer’ll just wairst un. Gi’s ’ere.’
‘Nope,’ said Philip, ‘I’m not mad ’bout video games,’ and he slid off down an aisle to the fruit machines where some of Ernie’s mates were trading in Es. A small white pill changed hands for fifteen pounds.
‘D’yer want one?’
‘What’s it do?’
‘Yer’ll never ’ave lived, mate.’
‘If you’ve any magic mushrooms, I’d like a go at them.’
‘I can’t ’elp yer but I know a man as can. Seven pound. Mind, they make t’sky bleed.’
‘Yuck.’
“’S great, a great bleedin’ sky.’
‘I’m putting me last pound int fruit machine, so belt up.’
‘Silly fool,’ said Ernie coming up. ‘That un’s a dood. I’d ’ave tellt thee.’
‘No, it certainly is not,’ said Philip, in excitement turning back to his native tongue. Concentrating, he willed the machine to be his slave. I’ll bloody well, bloody well . . . he thought. I’ll will the best thing there is on this earth. I’ll spend all the cash on it. In his trouser pocket—which was still his school trouser pocket, as Jocasta had gone to bed with a headache and forgotten to make him change—he felt the present he’d bought for Faith in Whitby in the lunch hour. It was a photograph frame. He’d thought she could put a picture of Holly in it for later on when all the people who’d known Holly were dead. It would be important. He’d have liked a picture of his own father, but Jocasta you couldn’t ask. He must be dead. A lot of people seemed to die befo
re Philip had had the chance of . . . He wasn’t mad on people dying.
Fastening the fingers of one hand round the edge of the frame, he thought intensely of the child on the altar with its arms spread out and swung down the lever on the machine with force.
Ernie was still saying, ‘Well, there goes a fuckin’ pound if ever,’ when, with a gaping metallic vomiting, money began to shower from the machine all over the floor.
The Ernie brigade were there like pups round a dish of meat and Philip in the middle of them, kicking and punching. A fight began, at first rather merrily, then with just a suggestion in the satanic dark of an intermittent flash of something in someone’s hand that clicked open. It came closer, but then Philip felt himself taken by the shoulder. He was pulled away and outside, on to the promenade.
It was a kindly-looking man in a tweed jacket and rather unusual shiny black trousers and trainers. Having hauled Philip away, he at once let go of him, most politely. ‘Bad types in there, lad,’ he said. ‘You don’t want anything in those places. Where’s your parents?’
‘They’re somewhere about.’
‘You weren’t alone in there, then?’
Philip thought of dastardly Ernie. He and his lot had got most of the money and were still fighting.
‘That wasn’t your brother, was it? With the gold earring and no hair?’
‘They’re all gold earring and no hair,’ said Philip in standard English to match the man’s. ‘That’s Ernie’s gang. Nick’s lot, not so often, but he’s in the pub somewhere.’
‘You have two very poor sorts of brother,’ said the man.
‘They’re not my brothers,’ said Philip. ‘They are not my brothers. I have no brothers. I have one sister. Ern and Nick work for my stepfather. They’re just looking after me until I go to my gran. I’d better get on there now, by myself. I don’t need them at all.’